There are some good reasons for using Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) version 2 over WSL version 1. Unfortunately I cant remember what they are at present. I do recall some frustration in the past when it wasn't available to me. Anyway, I spent a short while yesterday setting up WSL 2, which turns out to be very easy . WSL2 provides a VM with a Linux kernel as opposed to WSL1 which uses an Ubuntu flavour with Windows System Calls, so WSL2 should provide a more "real" linux experience. I installed a Debian flavour VM to run WSL2 and I was pleased to find out that I can run WSL1 and WSL2 alongside each other as I don't want to redo/convert/check what I have done before. I had a minor bug to investigate / fix before the Debian distro could be converted to WSL2 but once completed the distro looked fine.
As an afterthought the WSL2 tutorial recommends Windows Terminal - they are quite right; it is is an excellent addition to my environment. It is open-source software which you can install from the Microsoft Store. At its simplest it provides a tabbed window which allows you to run a number of Windows Command line and Powershell sessions. As I have WSL1 and WSL2 configured it automatically provides me with the option to start WSL1 and WSL2 sessions. Already it sounds good.
Even better you can easily customise its configuration using the settings.json configuration file. Until now I have used WSL for RPI and RISC-V SSH sessions and Putty for RISC-V console and Arduino serial port sessions. However, within a few minutes, I was able to customise WT allowing me access to all these systems as tabs in a WT window. RISC-V console sessions are the easiest, they just use Windows cmdline SSH. I have set up keys in WSL1 for my Raspberry PIs to for passwordless sign on so I use a WSL+SSH command line to start RPI sessions. For Serial ports we use minicom running on WSL1 to access COM ports courtesy of a helpful tutorial by Scott Hanselman, and I can use a WT WSL1+minicom command to start the consoles.
This is wonderful, I have all my terminal access in one place, working seamlessly and easily configurable.
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